The police in Gothenburg report that more and more people are selling drugs “completely openly” in the city. According to Robin Nilsson, head of the drug unit in Gothenburg, civilian officers are offered drugs to buy each work shift.

“We don’t have to work very hard to catch a drug dealer in Brunnsparken. We basically just have to go there. There are ten, fifteen, at a time that sell there.”, he says.

The police in both Stockholm and Uppsala confirm that there are now more drugs on the streets and that the gangs are getting bigger. One reason is the intensifying competition in the market which makes sales more visible to attract customers.

Another reason is the new secondary school law. Unaccompanied minors only need to submit an application to a secondary school to be able to remain in Sweden.

They can then continue drifting around on the streets, form gangs, join previously established criminal migrant gangs, commit crimes and both abuse and sell drugs.

Several patrol officers believe that the police authority itself is responsible for the development by completely neglecting to follow up and adapt its work. Most importantly, many of the police’s special drug units disappeared in connection with the reorganisation in 2015.

“They can sell completely openly. It is quite risk-free to sell drugs on the streets because we don’t have resources to take care of the problem”, Nilsson says.